Young children are often ignored or marginalised in the drive to address children's participation and their wider set of rights. This is the case generally in social research, as well as within the field of Arts-Based Education Research. This article contributes to the growing literature on young children's involvement in arts-based research, by…

The Drawn to Nature program is a collaboration between the museum and a local school district that encourages first graders to explore the ponds, meadows, forests, and sculpture on the 145-acre nature preserve of the Nassau County Museum of Art in two seasons. Students engage in active, developmentally appropriate learning through movement across…

The purpose of this article is to describe how an elementary art specialist scaffolded learning of specific academic vocabulary during a unit on how to create hollow clay ceramic sculptures. Although much has been written recently on how elementary teachers might better teach academic vocabulary in reading and language arts contexts as well as in…

Nature is all around, and can be the inspiration for some excellent creations in the classroom. How can a teacher bring these rich natural elements into the art class? As the author was exploring a hiking trail, he came across a large piece of bark from an old oak tree. A strong wind began to blow through the trees, the leaves began to rustle and…

Louise Nevelson's circular assemblage, "Collegiate School" (1972), was the inspiration for an art class with the preschoolers at the Kent Children's Center. Nevelson (1899-1988) was the ultimate "found art" artist. Finding interesting throwaway objects, in and out of trash bins, she constructed assemblages that completely changed their former use.…

Long before children enter school, it is their imagination that informs their play. Their drawing, too, relies heavily on their natural, unfettered ability to portray both the world around them and their own experiences within that world, without the conventional boundaries between "real" and "imaginary." Surrealism then, is an art movement and…

This is a collaborative lesson written by the authors. The lesson pairs two unlikely grade levels together to complete a touching and unique collaborative project. The collaboration aspect of this unit opened up endless possibilities for future collaborations.

In this article, the author shares how she changed the way she engaged with Alex, a student who was reluctant to do art projects. While reflecting on Alex's objections to doing art projects, she noticed one concern in particular that arose again and again: he wanted to play. Alex experienced the shift into art-making as a break from playing with…

Water gardens became popular in China during the Tang Dynasty and goldfish were domesticated more than 1000 years ago. Beyond being beautiful and tranquil, water gardens have the potential for much learning in an educational setting, especially for learning through art. In this article, the author shares how he collaborated with another teacher in…

Over the last year, the author's students have become very interested in popular culture from Korea and Japan. In particular, the class liked the films of Hayao Miyazaki, an Oscar-winning director who is considered one of the foremost anime filmmakers. In this article, the author came to an idea while he and the first-grade class were discussing…

This article describes a six-month emergent curriculum project on sculpture in a Reggio-inspired program and the thinking behind teachers' decisions in supporting the children's developing ideas. ["Moving into Uncertainty: Sculpture with Three- to Five-Year-Olds" was written with Bobbi-Lynn Keating, Annette Coates, and Barbara Bigelow.]